Too many problems, not enough time.

PowerShell on Linux

The big news out of Microsoft last month making headlines is the open sourcing of PowerShell. Along with this comes the ability to now run PowerShell not just in Windows but also Linux and Mac OS X. For people close to the PowerShell community this wasn’t unexpected, but make no mistake this is huge news.

I’m really liking this new Microsoft. They are really embracing this open source stuff. On first thought it’s not obvious how Microsoft will make money with PowerShell going open source. But Microsoft isn’t stupid, this is no doubt part of a larger master plan. With PowerShell so tightly linked to their products they are opening the door to a whole new demographic of users. I can see PowerShell going open source being a key to getting a new mix of Linux Developers working in Azure. Something close to my heart is VMware have also announced plans to port over PowerCLI to work with PowerShell for Linux. As a PowerCLI tragic myself I’ve seen first hand how frustrated Mac users have been that they can’t manage their VMware infrastructure using PowerShell / PowerCLI directly from a Mac.

Microsoft have made it clear this is very early stages of an Alpha release on GitHub. They are looking for community help to further develop and refine using PowerShell on Linux. There’s a large number of bug fixes, growing by the day, that they need to work through before we get anywhere close to a production release.

I decided to try it out myself and i’m impressed, the future looks awesome. Apart from Windows currently the open source version is limited to Ubuntu 14.04 /16.04, CentOS 7, and Mac OS X 10.11.

Once downloaded and depending on what OS you’re running you may need to install a few additional libraries first. In my case it was libnuwind8 and libicu52 using apt-get. After which i was able to install the PowerShell Debian package.

Another thing that’s also worth checking out is Visual Studio Code. This is another great open source project Microsoft has going. If you’ve used PowerShell ISE in Windows, think of a stream lined version of that, just more powerful leveraging extensions. Head over to https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux and download the package.

I recommend getting the PowerShell extension right off the bat. Click the Extensions icon on the left, search for PowerShell, and click Install

Now we have all the wonders of Intellisense that we are use to in the Windows PowerShell ISE. I really see Visual Studio Code becoming a future replacement for the Windows PowerShell ISE, which while still in development, has been quite stagnated in recent years.

So there you have it. Jeffrey Snover, a Technical Fellow, in the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Group has a great post and video discussing PowerShell going open source that should be checked out.